Thirty years after the Bancroft case, a Meth tracks down Kovacs to offer him a job as a high-tech sleeve.

At the end of season 1 of Altered Carbon in 2018, based on Richard Morgan’s cyberpunk bestseller, we watched as Joe Kinnaman’s Takeshi Kovacs set off on an epic quest to find his love, Quellcrist Falconer (believe me, these names are as tricky to type as they are to read!). Thirty years later and Kovacs is still on that quest and is currently a female lounge performer with a great voice.

The conceit with this show is that a person’s consciousness is stored on a disc called a stack, which is then inserted into a body (a sleeve), making it easy for Kovacs to now be played a new actor – Captain America’s Anthony Mackie. He’s a special, quick-healing military grade model with weapons enhancements, and the buff Mackie certainly looks the part. He also has more of a sense of humour than Kinnaman’s portrayal, bouncing off his foil, Poe, returning from the first season.

It’s all very Blade Runner dystopian noir, with neon signs and super tech, and there’s an impressive fight between Kovacs and some highly trained stooges. By the end of the hour, the premise has been set up and like any hard reboot, memories of the original are distant memories.

Verdict: Mackie fits his ‘sleeve’ like a glove, reminding us that he also has the action chops for genre fare. It just feels less fresh this time round and could do with getting a zap of originality. This is only one of eight episodes, so plenty of time for it to find itself. 6/10

Nick Joy